JUNE 2015
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
Travis Dittmer with one of his eight mustangs. The freeze brand on the pony’s neck tells age, source location and other vital information.
Take Travis Dittmer: he does
makeovers, but you won’t catch this
cowboy with his hands in somebody
else’s hair or brushing on blush. Since
2008, Dittmer has been doing mustang makeovers, taking tough-as-nails
wild ponies and transforming them
into manageable mounts. In 2013, he
was one of several mustang makeover contestants followed through the
process by National Geographic and
featured in a mini-series on Nat Geo
WILD.
Dittmer, who came to Texas 12
years ago, was born in Elko, Nev., and
raised in southwestern Idaho. He lived
in Montana for some nine years and
worked on ranches in various western
states. So he hails from wild-horse
country and has seen feral mustangs
and the vast horse herds managed by
the Bureau of Land Management. The
47-year-old horse trainer, instructor
16
and saddle maker has spent a quarter
of a century honing his equestrian
skills and will flat out tell you that for
his two cents, the mustang is the true
test of a horseman’s ability.
“What a way to cut your teeth
showing horses, man, showing mustangs; it doesn’t get any tougher than
that,” Dittmer said. “Golly, dang it’s
hard.” Bringing a wild mustang into
submission is a slow methodical grind
that tests a horseman’s resoluteness
and endurance, his mettle. Prior to his
introduction to the hearty breed, Dittmer had been a colt starter. Intrigued,
he continued to work with mustangs
and eventually took on several head.
“It’s called a storefront deal,” he
said. “I took a truckload of them —
15 of them — and I did a deal with
Mustang Heritage and the BLM to
where I kind of halter-broke them and
got them adopted. When you do a
large volume of them, man, you really
learn a lot. I’d been starting colts and
riding rough horses for years, but the
mustangs are different. They’re just…
I mean… you could start a hundred
to two hundred barn-raised horses
and never learn what you could off of
starting 10 mustangs.”
Dittmer said as with any breed there
is variation.
“Some of them are going to be
widow-makers,” he mused. “Out of a
truckload of 10, two are going to be
widow-makers. I mean, buddy, they’ll
chill you to the bone, that’s how
tough they are… They’ll just freakin’
kill you.”
Ten percent, he said, will be “pups,”
“gentler and more trusting than any
barn-raised horse you’ve ever seen.
And smarter. (They’ll) just blow your
mind how gentle they can get.”
Dittmer acknowledged that the